@fyepes582 I skipped over the word "many" and got baited by B as a result 😭

@GDatria715 me as well; it's the first question type that had me reaching out to tutors via email

Nearly went with B over E; what made me eliminate B is that I realized that an assumption that needed to be made to make B work as support is that Azedcorp would definitely accept Morris's higher offer.

Not only is the assumption uncertain, it's proven wrong by the premise stating that Azedcorp still refuses to sell.

@JasonCabanday it helps to stress that the author's conclusion was that "it was likely geological process that caused these marks" (credits to @oldguy for pointing it out!) and not that "worms were not the cause of the marks." I myself was baited by that and was grappling with the same issue in your comment as a result.

I think C is weaker than D because while it mentions that some early life forms could leave these marks, we still have to assume to be true that multicellular life forms existed 500 million years after the marks were created. Therefore, it misses the target of weakening the argument.

D weakens because it directly says "no, geological process that could make these marks at the time didn't happen," which implies that geological processes are not responsible for the marks.

I initially got tricked into choosing C (out of C and D), but after sitting for a bit longer in blind review, I realized that E was much more effective at weakening the argument.

The premises that try to support the conclusion relies on the assumption of "!worldwide effect --> !responsible for extinction of the last dinosaurs," but what if an asteroid can be responsible for the extinction without causing a worldwide effect?

As for the second premise, which wasn't addressed by the answer choices but I wanted to mention it anyways, maybe the craters were made in regions with no flora and fauna (or the flora and fauna are more spread out than the impact damage zone), hence no extinctions.

I don't understand why B would successfully weaken the argument. If true, wouldn't the rate of skin cancer still be constant? Unless we are to bring in the (true) outside assumption that the world population has been rapidly growing, which would result in the number of skin cancer cases go up as the number of old people grow larger over time, I can't wrap my head around how I'd be able to arrive at B, especially over E.

As for why E is wrong, is it for the sole fact that the answer choice states "believes"? JY mentions the distinction between "know"/"correctly believe" and "believe" in his video---would all "believe" answers be inherently wrong on Weaken/Strengthen questions?

I can't wrap my head around why C is incorrect :(

I had interpreted that C) "the people against the new freeway expressed their opinions with more emotion than the people for the freeway did" offered an alternative hypothesis to the conclusion given in the stimulus, that is the news program was biased towards emotionally volatility rather than differing views.

Why is that not a valid point that weakens the argument? How does it fall short? Is "the news program is biased towards emotionally charged interviews" not a valid alternative hypothesis debunking that it is "biased against the proposed freeway"?

My biggest issue with RREs is that I always take over 2 minutes to answer them, or I fall in love with bait answer and get the question wrong

@MJimenez7094 Catch me losing the 50/50 all the time 😭

@arieatsoranges I viewed this as a causal reasoning question, and the question stem asks which answer choice would refute A --(causes)--> B in favor of another hypothesis. From one of the lessons:

I'm reading the explanations and tutor comments and I'm still quite unable to wrap my head around how I'd be able to arrive at E 💀 might need some time to sit with it

Under time pressure, I chose the answer that is less a main point and more a summary of the passage (C) 💀 during blind review, I was able to deduce and select the main point (B), which is essentially the sentence from the passage "Rita Levi-Montalcini's discovery ... history of biochemistry."

I lose way more points like this later on in this PT. It goes to show just how important keeping your composure really is on this test.

@shreyavpatel1@gmail.com I'd say "which" refers to technique of tissue culture

Based on the question and the stimulus, I figured that I should look for an answer choice that strengthened the connection between "80 percent of cropland is now irrigated + currently the top producer of many specialty crops" and "input of Chinese settlers as reconstructed from their interactions with that landscape." I just couldn't, for the life of me, figure out which answer choice did that on my own.

• A strengthens "top producer of many specialty crops" only

• B connects "interaction with landscape" with "top producer of many specialty crops" and attributes that to Chinese settlers

• C connects "interaction with landscape" with "irrigated cropland" but doesn't attribute to anything beyond "large agribusinesses"

• D strengthens "irrigated cropland" only

• E connects "80% irrigated" with "top producer of many specialty crops" with weather

I got this question wrong because, in a rush to answer the question, I read "A department store is even offering a plan to holders of its credit card." and thought it referred to CAW when it refers to prepaid legal services in general.

In blind review, I realized that A was essentially confirmed in the first paragraph, "Plan members have the option of using either the plan's staff lawyers, whose services are fully covered by the cost of membership in the plan, or an outside lawyer."

@JebFarneth I viewed being able to employ an outside lawyer precisely as a benefit beyond the use of the service's of the plan's staff lawyers, since they're outside of the plan's staff

I got this wrong because I conveniently missed the small detail that the CAW was already in operation since 1985. I knew that the author disagrees with CAW, but D would've been more accurate than C.

@xcutethings Hello! I can share a bit of my reasoning below.

I applied the "most" arrow to the commercial growers and the disease free statements, which left me with two statements:

large nurseries -m-> commercial growers

large nurseries -m-> !diseased

(it's also implied therefore that commercial growers <-s-> !diseased. The answer choices don't use this, but it's useful to keep in mind for future reference)

With "most" statements, you have to take them separately. Additionally, you can't take contrapositives from "most" statements. So !commercial growers -m-> !large nurseries doesn't follow.

I hope this helps!

@attoliav I would say it still wouldn't be, since the "most" still exists at the start of the whole sentence. "Most large nurseries sell raspberry plants only to commercial raspberry growers" wouldn't rule out some large nurseries potentially selling to non-commercial growers, therefore making it invalid to take any contrapositive out of the statement.

I got the question right but I couldn't figure out why C was wrong other than my gut feeling telling me it was so. The explanation helped a lot in pointing out precisely why.

(I also took too long to diagram haha)

@rydlerjune Maybe someone has a better way of explaining it, but for me if it's a list like it is here, it's separate. The statement isn't saying that a facility needs to be a coffeehouse and a restaurant to be a public place; it's saying that those that are coffeehouses and those that are restaurants are public places

@EsotEric_PL Same here haha

I almost chose C, then I realized that Talbert doesn't talk about science at all 🤐 which left only D as the answer

@tst19 The first thing stated was the decline in non-govt voluntary community organizations (A), with the growth of govt services introduced after (B). Moreover, the conclusion that the editorial refutes is A --> B, so they correspond to "former" and "latter" in the later statement "former does not necessarily cause the latter"

I had the idea that the editorial undermines the conclusion by stating that B --> A (an alternate hypothesis) could be true. However, I was confused by the wording of B and D. Specifically, that I couldn't comprehend what the difference between "counterexample" and "alternate explanation" is.

Why would "alternate explanation" be a better fit here, and when would "counterexample" be a better fit?